P4 authentication prerequisites

The following information only applies to manual P4 DAM deployment. Do not follow these steps if you are using the automated deployment.

P4 DAM can only host assets stored in a P4 Server Stream depot. You must configure P4 authentication for the P4 DAM instance. Review the following information before setting up P4 authentication. See Setting up P4 authentication.

You need:

  • An installation of the following products, each on its own dedicated computer:

    • P4 DAM 2024.4 or later. The latest version is P4 DAM 2025.3.1.

      We recommend at least 3-4 GB of memory and proper provisioning.

    • Only assets stored in P4 Server Stream depots or classic (local) depots are available in P4 DAM.

      P4 DAM works with supported versions of P4 Server (Standard Maintenance).

      The versions supported in this release of P4 DAM are (latest patch of server version required):

      • P4 Server 2023.2

      • P4 Server 2024.1

      • P4 Server 2024.2 - Minimum P4 Server version required for P4 DAM asset bundles

      • P4 Server 2025.1

      We recommend a server security level of 1 or higher. To learn more, see Server security levels in the P4 Server Administration Documentation.

    • P4 Search support:

      • P4 Search 2025.2.1 and later with support for 2D and 3D technical specifications (recommended): P4 DAM 2025.3 and later.

      • P4 Search 2024.4 and later with improved index scalability: P4 DAM 2024.6 and later.

      • P4 Search 2024.3 and later with improved indexing speeds: P4 DAM 2024.5 and later.

      • P4 Search 2024.2 and earlier: All versions of P4 DAM.

  • One background P4 Server license seat for each integration Bot to give them access to P4 Server. For instructions on how to calculate the number of licensed seats you need, see P4 DAM license.

  • One P4 license seat to give P4 DAM super level access to P4 Server with an optional unlimited timeout ticket if ticket-based authentication will be used (recommended). For more information, see Setting protections with p4 protect and Ticket-based authentication in P4 Server Administration Documentation.

  • Two P4 Server license seats for P4 Search. If the P4 Server is security level 4 or lower, the number of licenses can be reduced to 1 by using the same user license for the P4 Search Perforce Service user and the Perforce Index user. This means the P4 Search Perforce Service user will have super level access. See P4 users in the P4 Search Documentation.

  • Users with appropriate access to P4 Server. All user and group administration occurs in P4 Server.

    Make sure that the names of P4 Server users that need access to P4 DAM do not exceed 100 characters. P4 DAM only supports usernames up to 100 characters.

  • An entry in the protections table for all users who require access to P4 DAM. To learn more, see Setting protections with p4 protect in the P4 Server Administration Documentation. The user used for integration requires super access in the protections table to view and manage protections.

After you configure P4 authentication and the P4 DAM instance is in use, you cannot revert to a different authentication method.

High level architecture diagram

To get a better understanding of the underlying architecture, the following diagram gives a high-level overview of the architecture:

High-level overview of Helix authentication architecture